Aw, hey. It's Lisa.

It's amazing how hard it is to start a new habit to try to blog every day. At the community college where I teach a few design classes, we make an assignment that requires the students to select a goal and blog about their progress every day for 40 days. I now see why they have a slow start and their blogs get better as the semester goes on. Creating new habits and changing old ones is really something that takes mindfulness and self-discipline. My goal with this blog is to keep my lifestyle in check and make sure my business doesn't consume me.

I've been spending an obscene amount of time working, thinking about work, thinking about projects, trying to understand my employees, visualizing the future of Wheelie, and trying to obtain clients in different regions of the country. It consumes my life, and I'm seeking to reclaim balance.

Friday was a good day for balance.

My manfriend woke me up early and made us breakfast. We actually sat at the kitchen table and ate food and drank coffee together before work. I don't think that has ever happened before for us. It's funny how the smallest things can affect your day in a positive way.

I worked in the morning at the office while Eddy the dog slept under my designer's desk. Eddy loves Amanda. Our operations manager, Dan, had the first ride break, so Eddy, Amanda, and I had the office to ourselves. I dug through all the resumes that have come in. We are a smaller company right now, and that is a good thing. It feels good to shake the dust and get the right people in place. I don't have time for entitlement. The company is too small for that. I'm interviewing next week for a Project Manager position (Dan's exact job description before he moved to a new position). I'm getting pretty excited about hiring since so many great resumes have shown up in my inbox. I'm looking for experience, proof of experience, and passion, not potential.

I'm working on myself as a boss. I'm always growing and learning and making mistakes, just like everyone else, and I definitely see some room for improvement on my management skills. I've got that creative thing dialed, and Wheelie is thriving because I have spent years getting our creative process on lockdown, so now I am focusing a lot of energy into setting expectations and making sure everyone understands their roles and tasks. I'm trying to distance myself from my employees, which is really hard because they are my friends and wonderfully fun people, but I think a little separation between work and play will make a big difference in my sleep pattern.

During the work day, Amanda and I also abandoned the office and went up to the mountain for a chairlift meeting. We also snapped some photos and video of local ripper and friend, Sam Bassett. I'm really enjoying photography right now. It's a personal creative outlet, and that feels good.

After work, my manfriend and I went mountain biking. We had a great time. We left Eddy alone in the house, unlocked and free, for the first time ever because we were just going to do the three mile loop on the trail next to my house. I do not have my biking legs yet! Gotta work on those. I was tired. We had a great time together, though, and it was nice to splash through mud and just be a person, not a business owner. In a small town where like every 8th chair on the chairlift has one of your clients on it, it's nice to go into the woods and disconnect from everything. I love my clients-- they are badasses with businesses of their own-- and I love snowboarding and biking with them. It was nice, however, to get some solid manfriend time and not talk about work and instead talk about bikes and sections of trail and how much fun we have with each other. Today was pretty much perfect. Eddy didn't even destroy anything at my house while we were gone.

I can't recommend Wheelie enough. Our website launch was almost too successful, and we could barely keep up with the amount of orders we received as soon as we announced the rebrand. They are ah.MAZING!"view more